Limnios in the West Australian on residential building approvals lower than a decade ago.
Perth’s “Everest-sized” housing crisis has been highlighted by new figures which show the number of residential building approvals last financial year was 10,000 lower than a decade ago.
The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data has revealed there were 14,796 residential building approvals in Perth during the 2023/2024 financial year compared to 25,047 a decade ago when the population of Perth was smaller.
Limnios Property Group managing director James Limnios said the huge housing crisis could last well into the coming decade unless building approvals and construction rates increased significantly in the near term.
He has raised concerns the supply of housing in Perth was firing only on one cylinder — house-and-land packages in the outer suburbs.
“The second cylinder — the supply of higher density homes such as boutique apartments developments as well as townhouses and villas — is now well below historic rates,” he said.
“This squeeze on higher density housing is underlined by the ABS figures that show there has been a major collapse in higher density building approvals over the past decade,” he added.
Mr Limnios said higher density building approvals had dwindled over the decade from accounting for 23.4 per cent of total residential building approvals in Perth 10 years ago to 14.8 per cent in the last financial year.
“And this trend is most apparent in the inner-city area of Perth where there were just 364 higher density dwellings approvals last financial year compared to over 900 a decade ago,” he said.
Mr Limnios added government commitments to ensure strong levels of higher density living and infill in Perth were not being met because of an over-reliance on an urban sprawl policy of developing new greenfield housing developments in the outer suburbs.
“The only way we can solve our housing crisis is to boost infill housing developments in near-city areas. This could quickly be achieved by supporting small to medium boutique developers who deliver two to four-level boutique apartments as well as grouped townhouse and villa developments.”
While UDIA WA chief executive Tanya Steinbeck agreed the latest building approval figures were reflective of the housing supply crisis she said just looking at solutions in relation to one form of housing product would not sufficiently “shift the dial” when it came to getting enough new homes to market fast enough.
“The current housing supply crisis is impacting across the housing continuum, from affordable and social housing, built-form and infill through to new development areas,” Ms Steinbeck said.
“The solutions to the housing crisis do not lie with one development type, this is about addressing blockages in the supply pipeline across the housing continuum.”
UDIA WA launched a campaign last week that recognised the work that had already been done by the State Government to address blockages in the housing supply pipeline and looks to provide recommendations for further, targeted action, that needs to be taken to get more homes on the ground, faster.
“We have been pleased with the current State Government’s willingness to listen to our recommendations to date and work collaboratively on shared solutions to the housing crisis,” Ms Steinbeck said.
“However, given the current context, UDIA WA is predicting that we will be around 30,000 new homes short of year-on-year demand by mid-2029 if urgent action is not taken.
Property tax reform, cutting red and green tape and investing in enabling infrastructure all form part of the campaign.
In terms of medium and higher density development specifically, UDIA WA has made recommendations in relation to expanding the Infrastructure Development Fund to an Infrastructure Catalyst Fund to help make this type of development more viable; as well as making the transfer duty concession permanent and removing the foreign buyers’ surcharge.
